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Leiden second Dutch university in QS World University Rankings

Leiden University has risen by one place in the annual QS World University Rankings and presently occupies the 74th place. This is apparent from the list published by educational advice company QS on 10 September. Leiden is the second Dutch university in the rankings.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology heads the rankings, followed by Harvard University in second, and the University of Cambridge in third place. In total, six Dutch universities have made it to the Top 100: the University of Amsterdam (58), Leiden University (74), Utrecht University (81), Erasmus University Rotterdam (92), Delft University of Technology (95) and the University of Groningen (97).

The most important factor in the QS rankings is the scientific reputation of the university, which counts for 40% of the final score and is determined on the basis of a survey among researchers. The other determining factors include employer reputation (10%), citations (20%), relations between students and staff (20%), proportion of international academic staff (5%) and proportion of international students (5%).

QS establishes separate rankings per field of research, which are only based on a university’s reputation among peers. In this assessment, Leiden University occupies 30th place in the field of Arts & Humanities, which makes it the only Dutch university to appear in the Top 50. According to this ranking, Leiden’s Law & Legal Studies is the top scorer of all the Dutch universities, having risen from 31st to 26th position. In the field of Life Sciences & Medicine, Leiden also appears in the Top 100, in 57th place.